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"The greatest writer of his time."-Edmund Wilson
"One of the great poets of the novel, a genius of his art"-Edgar Johnson
"His characters are marvelous, his insights wonderful…you don't expect reality but you get something bigger and better."-Ruth Rendell
The Old Curiosity Shop was initially published in a weekly serial, "Master Humphrey's Clock", between 1840 and 1841. Charles Dickens' story of the frail and innocent orphan had become such...
2) Agnes Grey
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"Agnes Grey" is an 1847 novel by English author Anne Brontë. Her debut novel, it tells the story of a governess called Agnes Grey who works in families of the English upper class in the early nineteenth century. Widely believed to have been heavily influenced by her own experiences as a governess, is an authentic portrayal of their delicate roles and how they affected young women. Anne Brontë (1820 – 1849) was an English novelist and poet. She...
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Washington Square is a short novel by Henry James. Originally published in 1880 as a serial in Cornhill Magazine and Harper's New Monthly Magazine, it is a structurally simple tragicomedy that recounts the conflict between a dull but sweet daughter and her brilliant, unemotional father. The plot of the novel is based upon a true story told to James by his close friend, British actress Fanny Kemble. The book is often compared with Jane Austen's work...
6) Swann's way
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The first volume of Proust's seven-part novel "In Search of Lost Time," also known as "A Remembrance of Things Past," "Swann's Way" is the auspicious beginning of Proust's most prominent work. A mature, unnamed man recalls the details of his commonplace, idyllic existence as a sensitive and intuitive boy in Combray. For a time, the story is narrated through his younger mind in beautiful, almost dream-like prose. In a subsequent section of the volume,...
7) Bleak House
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Bleak House is one of Charles Dickens's major novels.
The novel has many characters and several sub-plots, and the story is told partly by the novel's heroine, Esther Summerson, and partly by an omniscient narrator. At the centre of Bleak House is the long-running legal case, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which came about because someone wrote several conflicting wills. This legal case is used by Dickens to satirise the English judicial system, and he makes...
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It began as a dinner-party contest: when Mark Twain and his neighbor Charles Dudley Warner criticized the deplorable quality of their wives' reading material, the two writers were challenged to come up with something more intriguing. Thus, for the only time in his career, Twain collaborated on a novel with another author. The title of their rollicking 1873 tale became synonymous with the rampant post—Civil War corruption of Washington, D.C., where...
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In the picaresque series of sketches in Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens wrote one of the masterpieces of comic fiction, and presented readers with some of the most colorful and beloved characters of all time. In Dickens' first novel, initially based on a series of illustrations, members of the eponymous club recount their various experiences and encounters as they travel around England. Without the dark themes that dominated so many of his novels,...
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The Story of the Treasure Seekers (1899) is a children's novel by English writer Edith Nesbit. The first book in Nesbit's beloved Bastable trilogy-which also includes The Wouldbegoods (1901) and The New Treasure Seekers (1904)-The Story of the Treasure Seekers is a story of family, adventure, and mystery for children and adults alike.
The Bastable siblings-Dora, Oswald, Dicky, Alice, Noel, and Horace Octavius-are clever and curious children who...
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Captains Courageous is a novel by Rudyard Kipling, that follows the adventures of fifteen-year-old Harvey Cheyne Jr., the spoiled son of a railroad tycoon, after he is saved from drowning by a Portuguese fisherman in the north Atlantic.
The book's title comes from the ballad "Mary Ambree", which starts, "When captains courageous, whom death could not daunt". Kipling had previously used the same title for an article on businessmen as the new adventurers,...
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"As I sit down to write here amidst the shadows of vine-leaves under the blue sky of southern Italy, it comes to me with a certain quality of astonishment that my participation in these amazing adventures of Mr. Cavor was, after all, the outcome of the purest accident. It might have been any one. I fell into these things at a time when I thought myself removed from the slightest possibility of disturbing experiences. I had gone to Lympne because I...
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The first in a series of books about the Pepper family, these imaginative children's stories have delighted readers since their original publication in 1881. This first novel introduces Ben, Polly, Joel, Davie, and Phronsie, the children of their widowed Mamsie, Mrs. Pepper. While very poor, the Peppers live in a supportive little town in their beloved Little Brown House. The family faces many challenges, such as sickness and an overflowing generosity...
14) Erewhon
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A utopian classic with a rich legacy–influencing authors from Huxley to Herbert and beyond–Erewhon satirizes Victorian society with biting insight still relevant today.
When Higgs, a young traveler, stumbles upon the beautiful land of Erewhon, he soon discovers that its seemingly ideal culture is founded upon bizarre, unsettling beliefs. Crime is a sickness, while sickness is a crime; the greatest scholarly achievement is unreason, and all machines...
15) The professor
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The Professor was the first novel that Charlotte Brontë completed, and is based on her experiences as a language student in Brussels in 1842. Told from the point of view of William Crimsworth, the only male narrator that she used, the work questioned many of the presuppositions of Victorian society.
16) Heretics
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Heretics by G. K. Chesterton
Nothing more strangely indicates an enormous and silent evil of modern society than the extraordinary use which is made nowadays of the word "orthodox." In former days the heretic was proud of not being a heretic. It was the kingdoms of the world and the police and the judges who were heretics. He was orthodox. He had no pride in having rebelled against them; they had rebelled against him. The armies with their cruel...
17) Summer
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Originally born in an impoverished community, Charity's parents sought out the most educated man in the nearby New England town to raise their daughter. After being surrendered to a lawyer named Royall, Charity was raised comfortably by Mr. Royall and his wife. However, when Mrs. Royall tragically passes away, Charity's relationship with Royall is threatened. After his wife's death, Royall begins to feel sexually attracted to Charity, and when she...
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A Girl of the Limberlost (1909) is a novel by Gene Stratton-Porter. An immediate bestseller, A Girl of the Limberlost-her fourth novel-established Stratton-Porter's reputation as a leading naturalist and writer of the American Midwest. Written for children and adults alike, A Girl of the Limberlost is a classic tale of struggle and survival set in one of Indiana's iconic wilderness regions. Elnora Comstock has always felt different. Raised on the...
19) The Black Arrow
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The Black Arrow, first serialized in 1883, was eventually published as a novel by Robert Louis Stevenson in 1888. Although it was initially written for children, and has since remained relatively undervalued by critics, The Black Arrow has garnered praise from such figures as John Galsworthy for its richly imagined setting and vibrant dialogue.
Set in fifteenth-century England during the infamous War of the Roses, The Black Arrow follows the young...
20) Herland
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Herland (1915) is a utopian novel by American author and feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Herland was originally published in The Forerunner, a monthly magazine edited by Gilman, before going out of print for the next several decades. The novel was republished with an influential introduction by scholar Ann J. Lane in 1979 and has since been recognized as an important work of science fiction written by a leading feminist of the early twentieth century.
A...
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